About Ireland eBook

“All is changed now. Many of the shops
are closed and deserted, others will follow their
example shortly; the butter market has been removed
from the town, the cattle fairs have fallen to half
their former size. One sees shopkeepers, but
a short time back doing capital business, walking
about idle in the streets, with their shops closed;
armed policemen at every corner are necessary to prevent
a savage rabble from committing outrages, and many
people avoid going near the town at all. All
this is the result of William O’Brien’s
speech in Tipperary and the subsequent action of the
National League. The town and whole neighbourhood
were perfectly quiet till one day Mr. O’Brien
descends on it like an evil spirit, and tells the
shopkeepers and surrounding farmers that they are
to dictate to their landlords how to act in a case
not affecting them at all. For fear, however,
of not sufficiently arousing them for the cause of
others, he suggests that, in addition to dictating
to the landlord what his conduct shall be elsewhere,
all his tenants, farmers and shopkeepers alike, shall
demand a reduction of 25 per cent, on their own rents.
As to the farmers’ reduction I will say nothing;
if they wished it, they could go into the Land Court,
and if rented too high could get a reduction, retrospectively
from the day their application was lodged. The
reduction, however, that the shopkeepers were advised—­nay,
ordered—­to ask for must have surprised
them more than their landlord. Many of them, at
their existing rents, had piled up considerable fortunes
in a few years; others had enlarged their premises,
doubled their business, and thriven in every way;
nevertheless, they had to obey. The landlord
naturally refused to be dictated to by his tenants
in matters not affecting them; he also refused to
reduce the rents of men who in a few years had made
fortunes, and some of whom were commonly reputed to
be worth thousands. Legal proceedings were then
commenced, and the tenants’ interests were put
up to auction. Some of the most thriving shopkeepers
declined to let their tenancies, out of which they
had done so well, be sold; others, in fear of personal
violence and outrage, not unusual results of disobeying
the League, did allow them to be knocked down for
nominal sums to the landlord’s representative.
Let lovers of liberty and fair-play watch what followed.
All the shopkeepers who bought in their interests
were rigorously boycotted; men who had had a large
weekly turnover now saw their shops absolutely deserted.
Plate-glass windows that would not have shamed Regent
Street, were smashed to atoms by hired ruffians of
the League, and the shopkeepers themselves and their
families had to be protected from the mob by armed
police, placed round their houses night and day.
All this because they desired to keep their flourishing
businesses, instead of sacrificing them in a quarrel
not their own.